Abstract

Infrared emission from a carbon-nanotube (CNT)field-effect transistor, with the position of the light spot controlled by applied bias, was recently reported. In this letter, a self-consistent simulation, which couples a quantum treatment of the metal–CNT contacts to a semiclassical treatment of the channel, is performed to understand carrier transport and light emission in a CNT infrared emitter. The results show that when the channel is long, light emission significantly affects carrier transport, and reduces the source–drain current by a factor of 2 in ambipolar transport regime. The experimentally observed light-spot movement along the channel can be mostly understood and explained by a simple, semiclassical picture.

Received 22 September 2004Accepted 09 November 2004Published online 03 January 2005

Acknowledgments:

The authors thank Professor Mark Lundstrom of Purdue University and Dr. Phaedon Avouris of IBM T. J. Watson Research Center for extensive technical discussions. This work was supported by the start-up fund for J.G. at University of Florida, and the NSF Network for Computational Nanotechnology. The computational facility was made possible from the NSF Grant No. EIA-0224442, IBM SUR grants and gifts, and a DURIP Grant from Army Research Office.